Calcutta
The strangest thing about this strange journey was that it was launched by a word – and not an unusually resonant one either but a banal, commonplace coinage that is in wide circulation, from Cairo to Calcutta. That word is bundook, which means ‘gun’ in many languages, including my own mother tongue, Bengali (or Bangla). Nor is the word a stranger to English: by way of British colonial usages it found its way into the OxfordEnglishDictionary, where it is glossed as ‘rifle’.
But there was no rifle or gun in sight the day the journey began; nor indeed was the word intended to refer to a weapon. And that, precisely, was why it caught my attention: because the gun in question was a part of a name – ‘Bonduki Sadagar’, which could be translated as ‘the Gun Merchant’.
The Gun Merchant entered my life not in Brooklyn, where I live and work, but in the city where I was born and raised – Calcutta (or Kolkata, as it is now formally known). That year, as on many others, I was in Kolkata through much of the winter, ostensibly for business. My work, as a dealer in rare books and Asian antiquities, requires me to do a good deal of on-site scouting and since I happen to possess a small apartment in Kolkata (carved out of the house that my sisters and I inherited from our parents) the city has become a second base of operations for me.
But it wasn’t just work that brought me back every year: Kolkata was also sometimes a refuge, not only from the bitter cold of a Brooklyn winter, but from the solitude of a personal life that had become increasingly desolate over time, even as my professional fortunes prospered. And the desolation was never greater than it
was that year, when a very promising relationship came to a shockingly abrupt end: a woman I had been seeing for a long time had cut me off without explanation, blocking me on every channel that we had ever used to communicate. It was my first brush with ‘ghosting’, an experience that is as humiliating as it is painful.
Suddenly, with my sixties looming in the not-too-distant future, I found myself more alone than ever. So, I went to Calcutta earlier than usual that year, timing my arrival to coincide with the annual migration that occurs when the weather turns cold in northern climes and great flocks of ‘foreign-settled’ Calcuttans, like myself, take wing and fly back to overwinter in the city. I knew that I could count on catching up with a multitude of friends and relatives; that the weeks would slip by in a whirl of lunches, dinner parties and wedding receptions. And the thought that I might, in the midst of this, meet a woman with whom I might be able to share my life was not, I suppose, entirely absent from my mind (for this has indeed happened to many men of my vintage).
But of course nothing like that came to pass even though I lost no opportunity to circulate and was introduced to a good number of divorcees, widows and other single women of an appropriate age. There were even a couple of occasions when I felt the glow of faint embers of hope . . . but only to discover, as I had many times before, that there are few expressions in the English language that are less attractive to women than ‘Rare Book Dealer’.
So the months slipped by in a cascade of disappointments and the day of my return to Brooklyn was almost at hand when I went to the last of my social engagements of the season: the wedding reception of a cousin’s daughter.
I had just entered the venue – a stuffy colonial-era club – when I was accosted by a distant relative, Kanai Dutt.
I had not seen Kanai in many years, which was not entirely a matter of regret for me: he had always been a glib, vain, precocious know-it-all who relied on his quick tongue and good looks to charm
women and get ahead in the world. He lived mainly in New Delhi and had thrived in the hothouse atmosphere of that city, establishing himself as a darling of the media: it was by no means uncommon to turn on the television and find him yelling his head off on a talkshow. He knew everyone, as they say, and was often written about in magazines, newspapers and even books.
The thing that most irritated me about Kanai was that he always found a way of tripping me up. This occasion was no exception; he began by throwing me a curveball in the shape of my childhood nickname, Dinu (which I had long since abandoned in favour of the more American-sounding ‘Deen’).
‘Tell me, Dinu,’ he said, after a cursory handshake, ‘is it true that you’ve set yourself up as an expert on Bengali folklore?’
The almost audible sneer rattled me. ‘Well,’ I spluttered, ‘I did some research on that kind of thing a long time ago. But I gave it up when I left academia and became a book dealer.’
‘But you did get a PhD, didn’t you?’ he said, with barely concealed derision. ‘So you aretechnically an expert.’
‘I would hardly call myself that . . .’
He cut me short without apology. ‘So tell me then, Mr Expert,’ he said. ‘Have you ever heard of a figure called Bonduki Sadagar?’
He had clearly been intending to surprise me and he succeeded: the name ‘Bonduki Sadagar’ (‘Gun Merchant’) was so new to me that I was tempted to think that Kanai had made it up.
‘What do you mean by “figure”?’ I said. ‘You mean some kind of folk hero?’
‘Yes – like Dokkhin Rai, or Chand Sadagar . . .’
He went on to name a few other well-known characters from Bengali folklore: Satya Pir, Lakhindar and the like. Such figures are not quite gods and nor are they merely saintly mortals: like the shifting mudflats of the Bengal delta, they arise at the conjuncture of many currents. Sometimes shrines are built to preserve their memory; and almost always their names are associated with a
legend. And since Bengal is a maritime land, seafaring is often a prominent feature of such tales.
The most famous of these stories is the legend of a merchant called Chand – ‘Chand Sadagar’ – who is said to have fled overseas in order to escape the persecution of Manasa Devi, the goddess who rules over snakes and all other poisonous creatures.
There was a time in my childhood when the merchant Chand and his nemesis, Manasa Devi, were as much a part of my dream-world as Batman and Superman would become after I had learnt English and started to read comic books. Back then there was no television in India and the only way to entertain children was to tell them stories. And if the storytellers happened to be Bengali, sooner or later they were sure to circle back to the tale of the Merchant, and the goddess who wanted him as her devotee.
The story’s appeal is, I suppose, not unlike that of the Odyssey, with a resourceful human protagonist being pitted against vastly more powerful forces, earthly and divine. But the legend of the merchant Chand differs from the Greek epic in that it does not end with the hero being restored to his family and patrimony: the Merchant’s son, Lakhindar, is killed by a cobra on the night of his wedding and it is the boy’s virtuous bride, Behula, who reclaims his soul from the underworld and brings the struggle between the Merchant and Manasa Devi to a fragile resolution.
I don’t remember when I first heard the story, or who told it to me, but constant repetition ensured that it sank so deep into my consciousness that I wasn’t even aware that it was there. But some stories, like certain life forms, possess a special streak of vitality that allow them to outlive others of their kind – and since the story of the Merchant and Manasa Devi is very old it must, I suppose, possess enough of this quality to ensure that it can survive extended periods of dormancy. In any event, when I was a twenty-something student, newly arrived in America and casting about for a subject for a
research paper, the story of the Merchant thawed in the permafrost of my memory and once again claimed my full attention.
As I began to read the Bangla verse epics that narrate the Merchant’s story (there are many) I discovered that the legend’s place in the culture of eastern India was strangely similar to the pattern of its life in my own mind. The origins of the story can be traced back to the very infancy of Bengal’s memory: it was probably born amidst the original, autochthonous people of the region and was perhaps sired by real historical figures and events (to this day, scattered across Assam, West Bengal and Bangladesh, there are archaeological sites that are linked, in popular memory, to the Merchant and his family). And in public memory too the legend seems to go through cycles of life, sometimes lying dormant for centuries only to be suddenly rejuvenated by a fresh wave of retellings, in some of which the familiar characters appear under new names, with subtly changed plot lines.
A few of these epics are regarded as classics of Bengali literature and it was one such that became the subject of my research thesis: a six-hundred-page poem in early Bangla. This text was conventionally agreed to have been composed in the fourteenth century – but of course nothing is more grating to an aspiring scholar than a conventional opinion, so in my thesis I argued, citing internal evidence (such as a mention of potatoes), that the poem did not find its final form until much later. It was probably completed by other hands, I claimed, in the seventeenth century, well after the Portuguese had introduced New World plants to Asia.
From there I went on to argue that the life cycles of the story – its periodic revivals after long intervals of dormancy – were related to times of upheaval and disruption, such as the seventeenth century was in those parts of India where Europeans established their first colonies.
It was this last part of the thesis, I think, that most impressed my examiners (not to speak of the journal that subsequently published
the article in which I summed up my arguments). What amazes me in retrospect is not the youthful hubris that allowed me to make these arguments but rather the obtuseness that prevented me from recognizing that the conclusions I had reached in relation to the legend might apply also to the history of its existence in my own memory. I never asked myself whether the legend might have surfaced in my mind because I was myself then living through the most turbulent years of my life: it was a period in which I was still trying to recover from the double shock of the death of a woman I had been in love with, and my subsequent move, by grace of a providential scholarship, from the strife-torn Calcutta of my youth to a bucolic university town in the American Midwest. When at last that time passed it left me determined never to undergo that kind of turmoil again. I spared no effort to live a quiet, understated, uneventful life – and so well did I succeed that on that day, at the wedding reception in Kolkata when the Sadagar entered my life anew, in the guise of the Gun Merchant, it never occurred to me that the carefully planned placidity of my life might once again be at an end.
‘Are you sure you have the right name?’ I said to Kanai, dismissively. ‘Maybe you misheard it or something?’
But Kanai stood his ground, insisting that he had used the phrase ‘Gun Merchant’ advisedly. ‘I’m sure you know,’ he said, in his maddeningly superior way, ‘that the figure of a Merchant crops up under many different names in our folklore. Sometimes the stories are linked to certain places – and my feeling is that the legend of Bonduki Sadagar is one of those, a local tale.’
‘Why?’
‘Because his legend is tied,’ said Kanai, ‘to a shrine – a dhaam– in the Sundarbans.’
‘The Sundarbans!’ The idea that there might be a shrine hidden inside a tiger-infested mangrove forest was so far-fetched that I burst into laughter. ‘Why would anyone build a dhaam in a swamp?’
‘Maybe,’ said Kanai coolly, ‘because every merchant who’s ever sailed out of Bengal has had to pass through the Sundarbans –there’s no other way to reach the sea. The Sundarbans are the frontier where commerce and the wilderness look each other directly in the eye; that’s exactly where the war between profit and Nature is fought. What could be a better place to build a shrine to Manasa Devi than a forest teeming with snakes?’
‘But has anyone ever seen this shrine?’ I asked.
‘I haven’t been there myself,’ said Kanai. ‘But my aunt Nilima has.’
‘Your aunt? You mean Nilima Bose?’
‘Yes, exactly,’ said Kanai. ‘It was she who told me about Bonduki Sadagar and the dhaam. She heard that you were in Kolkata and she asked me to tell you that she would be glad if you could go and see her. She’s in her late eighties now and bedridden, but her mind is as sharp as ever. She wants to talk to you about the shrine: she thinks you’ll find it interesting.’
I hesitated. ‘I don’t know that I’ll have the time,’ I said. ‘I’m heading back to New York very soon.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s up to you.’ Pulling out a pen he scribbled a name and a number on a card and handed it to me.
I peered at the card, expecting to see his aunt’s name. But that was not what he had written.
‘Piya Roy?’ I said. ‘Who’s that?’
‘She’s a friend,’ he said. ‘A Bengali American, teaches somewhere in Oregon. She comes here for the winter, like you, and usually stays with my aunt. She’s here now and she’ll make arrangements if you decide to visit. Give her a call: I think you’ll find it worth your while –Piya’s an interesting woman.’
Kanai’s aunt’s name added heft to what had so far seemed a tall tale. A story that came from Nilima Bose could not be scoffed at: wooed by politicians, revered by do-gooders, embraced by donors
and celebrated by the press, she was a figure whose credibility was beyond question.
Born into a wealthy Calcutta legal dynasty, Nilima had defied her family by marrying an impoverished schoolteacher. This was way back in the early 1950s; after the marriage, Nilima had moved with her husband to Lusibari, a small town on the edge of the Sundarbans. A few years later she had founded a women’s group that had since grown into the Badabon Trust, one of India’s most reputed charitable organizations. The trust now ran an extended network of free hospitals, schools, clinics and workshops.
In recent years I had kept track of Nilima’s doings mainly through a chat group for members of the extended family: my personal acquaintance with her dated back to my adolescence, when I had crossed paths with her at a few family gatherings. The last of these had occurred so long ago that I was surprised – and more than a little flattered – to learn that Nilima remembered me. Under the circumstances, I told myself, it would be rude if I didn’t at least call the number that Kanai had given me.
I dialled the number next morning and was answered by an unmistakably American voice. Piya had evidently been expecting my call for her opening words were: ‘Hello – is that Mr Datta?’
‘Yes – but please call me Deen, it’s short for Dinanath.’
‘And I’m Piya, which is short for Piyali,’ she said, sounding both brisk and friendly. ‘Kanai said you might call. Nilima-di’s been asking about you. Do you think you might be able to come see her?’
There was something about her voice – a forthrightness combined with a certain element of gravity – that arrested me. I remembered what Kanai had said – ‘Piya’s an interesting woman’ – and was suddenly very curious about her. The excuses I had prepared slipped from my mind and I said: ‘I’d very much like to come. But it would have to be soon because I’m leaving for the US in a couple of days.’
‘Hold on then,’ she said. ‘Let me have a word with Nilima-di.’
It took her a few minutes to come back on line. ‘Could you come this morning?’
I had made many plans for that morning but suddenly they didn’t seem to matter. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can be there in an hour, if that’s okay.’
The address that Piya gave me was of Nilima’s ancestral home in Ballygunge Place, one of Kolkata’s poshest neighbourhoods. Although I had not visited the house in many years I remembered it well, from childhood visits with my parents.
I discovered now, on stepping out of the Ola cab that had brought me to Ballygunge Place, that the old house was long gone; like many other grand Calcutta mansions it had been torn down and replaced with a modern apartment block that was large enough to accommodate everyone who had a claim to the ancestral property.
The new building was unusually stylish and the lift that took me up to Nilima’s floor was decorated with elegant ‘designer’ touches, as were the front doors of every apartment that I passed on the way. Nilima’s door was the only exception in that it had no embellishments except a sign that said NILIMA BOSE, BADABON TRUST.
I rang the bell and the door was opened by a slim, small woman with close-cropped hair that was just beginning to turn grey at the edges. Her clothes – jeans and a T-shirt – accentuated the boyishness of her build; everything about her was spare and streamlined except her eyes, which were large and seemed even more so because the whites stood out sharply against her dark, silky complexion. Her face was devoid of make-up and she wore no ornamentation of any kind. But on one of her nostrils there was a pinprick that suggested that she had once sported a nose stud.
‘Hello, Deen,’ she said as we shook hands. ‘I’m Piya. Come on in –Nilima-di’s waiting for you.’
Stepping inside I discovered that the apartment was divided into two sections: the outer part, which served as an office for the trust, was filled with the glow of computer screens. A dozen earnest-
looking young men and women were hard at work there; they spared us scarcely a glance as we walked through to the rear where lay Nilima’s living quarters.
Opening a door, Piya ushered me into a tidy, sunlit room. Nilima was lying on a comfortable-looking bed, propped up by a few pillows and half covered by a bed-sheet. Always tiny, she seemed to have shrunk in size since I had last seen her. But her face, round and dimpled, with steel-rimmed eyeglasses, was just as I remembered, down to the sparkle in her eye.
Piya found me a chair and pushed it close to the bed. ‘I’ll leave you two alone now,’ she said, giving Nilima’s hand an affectionate squeeze. ‘Don’t tire yourself out, Nilima-di.’
‘I won’t, dear,’ Nilima said, in English. ‘I promise.’
A fond smile appeared on her face as she watched Piya leave the room. ‘Such a sweet girl,’ she said, switching to Bangla. ‘And strong too. I don’t know what I would do without Piya.’
Nilima’s Bangla, I noticed, had acquired the earthy tones of a rural dialect, presumably that of the Sundarbans. Her English, by contrast, still retained the rounded syllables of her patrician upbringing.
‘It’s Piya who keeps the trust going nowadays,’ Nilima continued. ‘It was a lucky day for us when she came to the Sundarbans.’
‘Does she spend a lot of time out there?’ I said.
‘Oh yes, when she’s in India she’s mostly in the Sundarbans.’
Nilima explained that it was Piya’s research, in marine biology, that had first brought her to the Sundarbans. Nilima had given her a place to stay and supported her work, and over the following years Piya’s involvement with the trust had deepened steadily.
‘She spends every vacation with us,’ said Nilima. ‘Summer and winter, she comes whenever she can.’
‘Oh, really?’ I said, trying not to sound unduly inquisitive. ‘Doesn’t she have a family, then?’
Shooting me a shrewd glance, Nilima said: ‘She’s not married, if that’s what you mean –’ at which I dropped my eyes and tried to
look disinterested.
‘But Piya does have a family of sorts,’ Nilima continued. ‘She’s adopted the wife and son of a Sundarbans villager who died while assisting with her research. Piya’s done everything possible to help the wife, Moyna, in bringing up the boy.’ She checked herself: ‘Or at least she’s tried . . .’
Then she sighed and shook her head, as if to recall why she had asked me to come. ‘I mustn’t ramble on,’ she said. ‘I know you’re pressed for time.’
Truth to tell I was so eager to know more about Piya that I wouldn’t at all have minded if she had rambled on in this vein. But since I couldn’t very well say so, I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the small voice recorder that I usually take with me when I’m scouting for antiquities.
‘Are you planning to record this?’ said Nilima in surprise.
‘It’s just a habit,’ I said. ‘I’m a compulsive note-taker and recordkeeper. Please forget about the gadget – it’s not important.’
Nilima knew the exact date on which she had first heard of the Gun Merchant. She had entered it that very day in an account book that bore the label ‘Cyclone Relief Accounts, 1970’. The book had recently been retrieved for her from the archives of the Badabon Trust.
Flipping it open, she showed me the entry: at the top of a page, in Bangla script, were the words ‘Bonduki Sadagarer dhaam’– ‘the Gun Merchant’s shrine’. Below was the date ‘November 20, 1970’.
Eight days earlier – on November 12, 1970, to be precise – a Category 4 cyclone had torn through the Bengal delta, hitting both the Indian province of West Bengal and the state that was then called East Pakistan (a year later it would become a new nation, Bangladesh). Storms had no names in this region back then but the 1970 cyclone would later come to be known as the Bhola cyclone.
In terms of casualties the Bhola cyclone was the greatest natural disaster of the twentieth century; its toll is conservatively estimated
at three hundred thousand lives lost but the actual number may have been as high as half a million. Most of those casualties were in East Pakistan where political tensions had long been simmering. West Pakistan’s laggardly response to the disaster played a critical part in triggering the war of independence that resulted in the creation of Bangladesh.
In West Bengal it was the Sundarbans that absorbed the impact of the cyclone. Lusibari, the island where Nilima and her husband lived, suffered a great deal of damage: a large chunk of the island was ripped away by the storm surge, houses and all.
The damage to Lusibari was, however, a pale shadow of what was visited on the islands and settlements to its south. But Nilima did not learn of this till several days later. She was told about it by a young fisherman of her acquaintance, Horen Naskar: he had been out at sea, fishing, and had witnessed the devastation with his own eyes.
Horen’s account prompted Nilima to assemble a team of volunteers to collect and distribute emergency supplies. With Horen at the helm of a hired boat, Nilima and her team had ferried supplies to some of the villages near the coast.
On each outing they saw horrific sights: hamlets obliterated by the storm surge; islands where every tree had been stripped of its leaves; corpses floating in the water, half eaten by animals; villages that had lost most of their inhabitants. The situation was aggravated by a steady flow of refugees from East Pakistan. For several months people had been coming across the border, into India, in order to escape the political turmoil on the other side; now the flow turned into a flood, bringing many more hungry mouths into a region that was already desperately short of food.
One morning, Horen steered the boat to a part of the Sundarbans where the mighty Raimangal River ran along the border, with different countries on its two shores. Nilima usually avoided this stretch of river: it was notoriously frequented by smugglers and its
currents were so powerful that boats were often inadvertently swept across the border.
Not without some difficulty Horen managed to keep the boat close to the Indian side, and in a while they came to a sandbank where a village had once stood: nothing was left of the settlement but a few bent poles; every last dwelling had been swept away by the wave that followed the cyclone.
Spotting a few people on the riverbank, Nilima asked Horen to pull in. From the look of the place, she assumed that many of the hamlet’s inhabitants had been killed or wounded – but on enquiring, she received an unexpected answer. She learnt that no one from that hamlet had suffered any bodily harm; they had even managed to salvage their belongings and stocks of food.
To what did the village owe its good fortune?
The answer startled Nilima: her informants told her that the miracle was due to Manasa Devi, the goddess of snakes, who, they said, was the protector of a nearby shrine.
Shortly before the storm’s arrival, as the skies were turning dark, the shrine’s bell had begun to ring. The villagers had rushed there, taking whatever food and belongings they could carry. Not only had the shrine’s walls and roof kept them safe from the storm, it had continued to shelter them afterwards, even providing them with clean, fresh water from its well – a rare amenity in the Sundarbans.
Nilima had asked to see the shrine and was led to it by the villagers. It was a good distance from the sandbank, situated on a slight elevation, in the middle of a sandy clearing that was surrounded by dense stands of mangrove.
Of the structure itself Nilima retained only a vague memory –there were hundreds of people milling around and their belongings were stacked everywhere. All she could recall was a set of high walls and a curved roof with the profile of an upturned boat: its shape had reminded her of the famous temples of Bishnupur.
Nilima had asked whether there was a custodian or caretaker that she could speak to. In a while, a middle-aged Muslim man, with a greying beard and white skull cap, had emerged from the interior. Nilima learnt that he was a majhi, a boatman, and that he was originally from the other side of the Raimangal River. As a boy he had occasionally worked for the people who then tended the shrine: they were a family of Hindu gayans(or ballad singers) who had kept alive the epic poem (or panchali) that narrated the legend of the shrine, passing it down orally through many generations. But over the years the family had dwindled to one last remaining member, and it was he who had asked him, the boatman, to take care of the shrine after his passing. That was a long time ago, a decade before the partitioning of the Indian subcontinent in 1947; the boatman had been looking after the dhaam ever since; it had become his home and he now lived there with his wife and son.
Nilima had asked if it was strange for him, as a Muslim, to be looking after a shrine that was associated with a Hindu goddess. The boatman had answered that the dhaam was revered by all, irrespective of religion: Hindus believed that it was Manasa Devi who guarded the shrine, while Muslims believed that it was a place of jinns, protected by a Muslim pir, or saint, by the name of Ilyas.
But who had built the shrine, and when?
The boatman had been reluctant to answer. He did not know the legend well, he said, and could only remember a few snatches of the poem.
Wasn’t there a written version of the poem? Nilima asked. No, said the boatman; it was the Gun Merchant’s express desire that the poem never be written down but only passed on from mouth to mouth. Unfortunately the boatman had never memorized the poem and remembered only a few verses.
At Nilima’s insistence the boatman had recited a couple of lines and the words had lodged themselves in Nilima’s memory, perhaps
because they sounded like nonsense verse (a genre of which she was very fond).
Kolkataeytokhonnachhiloloknamakan
Banglarpatanitokhonnagar-e-jahan
Calcutta had neither people nor houses then Bengal’s great port was a city-of-the-world.
Nilima cast me a glance and laughed, a little awkwardly, as though she were embarrassed to bring such a piece of silliness to my notice.
‘It doesn’t make any sense, does it?’ she said.
‘Not immediately,’ I said. ‘But go on.’
Nilima had continued to question the boatman and he had responded by becoming increasingly reticent, pleading ignorance on the one hand, yet insisting on the other that it was impossible for most people to make sense of the legend. But Nilima had persisted and had succeeded in getting him to divulge the general outline of the story. It proved to be quite similar to the legend of the merchant Chand.
Like Chand, the Gun Merchant was said to have been a rich trader who had angered Manasa Devi by refusing to become her devotee.
Plagued by snakes and pursued by droughts, famines, storms, and other calamities, he had fled overseas to escape the goddess’s wrath, finally taking refuge in a land where there were no serpents, a place called ‘Gun Island’ – Bonduk-dwip.
Here Nilima stopped to ask me whether I had ever heard of a place of that name.
I shook my head: ‘No, never,’ I said. ‘It must be one of those fairytale countries that crop up in folk tales.’
Nilima nodded. There were some other such places in the story, she said, but she couldn’t recall their names.
But not even on Gun Island had the Merchant been able to conceal himself from Manasa Devi. One day she had appeared to
him out of the pages of a book and had warned him that she had eyes everywhere. That night he had tried to hide himself in an ironwalled room, but even there she had hunted him down: a tiny, poisonous creature had crept through a crack and bitten him. Having barely survived the bite, the Merchant had escaped from Gun Island, on a ship, but while at sea he was once again captured by pirates. They threw him into a dungeon and were taking him to be sold, at a place called ‘The Island of Chains’ (Shikol-dwip) when Manasa Devi appeared before him once again. She promised that if he became her devotee and built a shrine for her in Bengal, she would set him free and make him rich.
Now at last the Merchant gave in and swore that he would build a temple for the goddess if only she would help him find his way back to his native land. So she set him free and wrought a miracle: the ship was besieged by all manner of creatures, of the sea and sky, and while the pirates were fighting them off, the captives managed to take over the ship and seize their captors’ riches. The Merchant’s share of the spoils allowed him to turn homewards and on the way he was able to make many profitable trades. On his return to Bengal he brought with him a fortune so vast, and a tale so amazing, that it earned him the title Bonduki Sadagar – the Gun Merchant. This was how the shrine had got its name.
‘And that was all there was to it,’ said Nilima with a shrug. ‘I told the boatman that it really made no sense at all. He didn’t seem at all surprised. He said: “I told you, didn’t I? The legend is filled with secrets and if you don’t know their meaning it’s impossible to understand.” And then he added: “But some day, when the time is right, someone will understand it and who knows? For them it may open up a world that we cannot see.”’
Nilima gave me a self-deprecating smile. ‘I don’t know what it was but there was something about the story that got into my head: it haunted me and I wanted to know more about it. But there was
always so much else to do that it dropped out of my mind – until just the other day, when I was reading something about the great cyclone of 1970. Then suddenly it all came back to me.’
‘But you only visited the temple that one time?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It was the only time I actually went there. I did see it again once, from a distance, but I didn’t have time to stop. That was about ten years ago. I believe the dhaam’s still there, but who knows how much longer it’ll remain? The islands of the Sundarbans are constantly being swallowed up by the sea; they’re disappearing before our eyes. That’s why I feel that some record should be made of it; for all I know that temple might be an important historical monument.’
Trying to be helpful I said: ‘Have you tried to contact the Archaeological Survey of India?’
‘I wrote to them once but they showed no interest at all.’
Then she glanced at me and her face broke into a dimpled smile. ‘So then I thought of you.’
Taken aback, I said: ‘Me? Why me?’
‘Well, you have a passion for antiquities, don’t you?’
‘Yes, but not of this kind,’ I said. ‘I mainly deal with old books and manuscripts. I often visit libraries, museums, old palaces and so on – but I’ve never done anything remotely like this.’
‘Still, wouldn’t you at least like to see the place?’
The only reason I didn’t say no straight away was that it would have seemed rude. At that moment a visit seemed impossible to me – because I was due to leave for New York at the end of the week; because I already had a packed schedule of appointments for the days ahead; and (most of all) because I didn’t much care for swamps and mangroves.
I tried to get out of it by mumbling an excuse: ‘I don’t know that I’ll have the time; I have to catch a flight home . . .’
But Nilima was not a woman to give up easily.
‘It wouldn’t take long,’ she persisted. ‘You could go there and be back in a day. I’d be glad to arrange it.’
I was trying to think of a polite way to decline when who should walk in but Piya.
Nilima lost no time in roping her in: ‘Tell him, Piya – a visit to the shrine won’t take long. He’s afraid of missing his flight to America.’
Piya turned to me and asked when I was scheduled to fly. I told her and she reassured me: ‘Don’t worry – you’ll be back in good time for your flight.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘As sure as it’s possible to be.’ She added apologetically: ‘I’d have liked to accompany you myself. Unfortunately I can’t because I’m on my way to a conference in Bhubaneswar and won’t be back till next week. But if you do decide to go I’ll see to it that you’re well looked after.’
Her smile made me reconsider the matter. ‘I’ll think it over,’ I said.
Gathering my things together I said goodbye to Nilima. Then Piya led me to an adjoining room, where she introduced me to a matronly, heavy-browed woman in a nurse’s uniform – a blue and white sari.
‘This is Moyna Mondal,’ said Piya, ‘Nilima’s favourite nurse.’ She threw an arm around the nurse’s shoulder and gave her a hug. ‘Moyna and I are like family; we’ve become sisters over the years. If you decide to go she’ll arrange everything. You don’t need to worry about anything: it’ll be quick and easy.’
Piya’s tone was so encouraging that I was tempted to say yes. But something held me back.
‘I just need to check a few things,’ I said. ‘Will it be okay if I get back to you tomorrow morning?’
‘Sure. Take your time.’
Cinta
My mind was in a muddle when I left Nilima’s flat. The reasonable, practical, cautious parts of me were dead set against going. I have always been a nervous traveller and the thought of missing my flight filled me with dread. Nor could I imagine that I would find anything of special interest, from a professional point of view: if ever there had been anything of value at the shrine it was sure to be long gone.
But then there was Piya: there was something about her that reminded me of Durga, my first, long-ago love. It wasn’t so much her appearance as something about her manner, her gaze; I sensed in her a single-mindedness, an idealism that was reminiscent of Durga.
I knew that if it had been possible for Piya to accompany me I would have been glad to go. This frightened me, and added to my confusion. Some months before, my therapist, back in Brooklyn, had told me that I was in a peculiarly vulnerable state and was likely to delude myself about relationships that had not the slightest chance of working out. She had warned me especially about situations in which I found myself fixating on women who were unattainable or ill-matched for someone in my circumstances: ‘Don’t set yourself up to fail, yet again.’
Those words echoed in my ears all the way back to my apartment. By dinner-time I had more or less made up my mind that I would not go. But that evening I was invited to dinner by one of my sisters and when I went up to her apartment I found her, and her whole multi-generational household, sitting rapt around a television set. And what should they be watching but a (bizarrely modernized)
version of the legend of Manasa Devi and the Merchant? I was told that this was now the most popular show on regional television: evidently the legend of the Merchant was undergoing one of its periodic revivals, not just in my own mind, but in the culture at large.
The thought disquieted me.
Later, back in my own apartment, I was tidying away my things when my eyes fell on my voice recorder. I reached for it, thinking that I would erase my interview with Nilima, but by accident I pushed the wrong button and the interview began to play from the start. I listened idly until the recording reached the bit where Nilima had recited the following lines:
Calcutta had neither people nor houses then Bengal’s great port was a city-of-the-world.
Here something caught my interest. I hit the pause button and replayed that bit several times over.
The lines seemed nonsensical at first, but as I listened to them it struck me that their metre and rhythm were consistent with a particular genre of Bengali folk poetry, one that has been known to yield some valuable historical insights. It struck me as interesting also that the boatman had recited the couplet in answer to Nilima’s question about when the shrine was built. Was he perhaps trying to suggest a date or a period?
Needless to add, poems of this kind are often intentionally cryptic. Yet, in this instance, the first line was not particularly mystifying: what it probably implied was that the Merchant’s shrine was built at a time when there was no Calcutta – that is to say, before the city’s founding, in 1690.
But what of the second, more enigmatic line?
The words ‘Bengal’s great port’ were clearly intended to refer to Calcutta’s predecessor as the most important urban centre in Bengal.
And there could be no doubt about the identity of that city: it was Dhaka (now the capital of Bangladesh).
But the phrase ‘city-of-the-world’, on the other hand, made no sense in this context: I had never heard of the Persian or Urdu phrase, nagar-e-jahan, being used in relation to Dhaka. How had it found its way into this couplet?
It struck me presently that this line, like the first, might also be a cryptic reference to a date.
As it happens my own family’s origins lie in the part of the Bengal delta that is now Bangladesh: my parents and grandparents had crossed over to India when the subcontinent was partitioned. But before that they had spent a lot of time in Dhaka – and now, as I tried to recall the Dhaka stories of my older relatives, something flashed through my mind. Flipping open my laptop I started a search.
An answer appeared within seconds.
What I learnt was this: Dhaka had served as the capital of Bengal when it was a province of the Mughal Empire. The fourth Mughal monarch was the emperor Jahangir (‘World-Conqueror’) and during his reign, and for some years afterwards, Dhaka had been renamed Jahangir-nagar in his honour.
Could it be that nagar-e-jahanwas a play on words, a cryptic reference to Dhaka in the seventeenth century?
If this were the case, it would follow that the shrine had been built at some time between 1605, when the emperor Jahangir was enthroned, and 1690, when Calcutta was founded by the British.
Once this idea had entered my head other details began to fall into place. For example, the evident Persian influence in the couplet: the seventeenth century was a period in which Bangla had absorbed many words and phrases from Persian, Arabic and, for that matter, Portuguese and Dutch as well.
A date range of 1605 to 1690 was supported by another detail in Nilima’s story: the fact that the shrine had reminded her of the
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myself continually for my disobedience. I never disobeyed him before, and I seem to see his eyes full of reproach fixed upon me, and to hear his voice—Oh, Arthur! Arthur!”
“Let me see the letter, darling.”
Neva extricated it from the folds of her dress, and gave it to him. They halted while he read it. A look of surprise, wonder and incredulity mantled Lord Towyn’s face as he read. It was followed by a sternness that well became his fair and haughty face.
“I pronounce the letter a forgery!” he declared. “May I keep it, Neva, for the present? I desire to show it to Mr. Atkins, who shall give us his opinion on the handwriting.”
“Yes; keep it,” assented Neva.
Lord Towyn carefully put it in his pocket.
“I pronounce the letter a forgery,” he repeated sternly. “How did it come to you, darling?”
“Lady Wynde gave it to me on my return from France. Papa desired her to retain it for a year. Who would forge such a letter, Arthur?”
“I don’t know. I am puzzled. One cannot suspect Lady Wynde, and yet—and yet—I don’t know what to think, Neva. I don’t believe Sir Harold ever saw Rufus Black.”
“Rufus says he never saw papa, or that he never spoke to him,” said Neva. “And that remark made me doubt the letter. But Rufus never forged it, Arthur. Rufus is a kind-hearted, but weak-willed boy—he is no more. If he had more ‘backbone’ in his character, he would be even noble. I like him, Arthur, and I know he never wrote that letter. Lady Wynde did not. She is too good for that. It might have been written by Craven Black. I do not like him, and think him quite capable of the forgery, only so many of the words are papa’s own that it seems wicked to doubt its authenticity.”
“I will prove it a forgery!” cried the young earl. “Sir Harold was incapable of binding your fate in this manner to a man you never saw before it was written. There is some foul conspiracy against you, Neva, but we have outwitted your enemies. I am impatient to have
you under my own guardianship. The possibility that you have enemies makes me afraid to trust you from me. Give up this visit to Wynde Heights, darling.”
“It is too late, Arthur. We shall stay there but a fortnight, and I have promised to go. Papa bade me love his wife and obey her, and though she no longer bears his name, and I no longer owe her obedience, yet I have given my word to go up to Yorkshire with her, and must keep my promise.”
“But when you return, Neva, you will marry me? Do not condemn me to a long probation. Let us be married quietly some morning at Wyndham church, after due intimation to our friends. Shall it not be so?”
Neva yielded a shy assent.
“We will be married a month hence, Neva?” whispered the ardent young lover.
“Two months,” said Neva, smiling. “I must not be too lightly won, Lord Towyn. And, besides, I must have the orthodox trousseau. I will tell Mrs. Black of our engagement when I am with her at Wynde Heights. Rufus is not going with us, nor is Artress.”
They had threaded the wood and come out upon the highway long since while they were talking, and were now within sight of Hawkhurst. Rufus Black was riding out of the great gates, on his way to meet Neva. The tete-a-tete of the young pair was over for the morning, and recognizing the fact, and not wishing to proclaim his happy secret to his defeated rival, Lord Towyn made his adieus to Neva, begging her to write him daily from Yorkshire, which she promised to do, and, then raising his hat to Rufus Black, the young earl spurred his horse and rode swiftly on toward Wyndham.
Neva returned home with Rufus.
On Monday morning, Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black, accompanied by Miss Wynde, departed for Wynde Heights.
On Wednesday, Lord Towyn looked for a letter from his young betrothed. None came. Thursday, Friday and Saturday went by, and
still there came no letter from Neva, announcing her safe arrival in Yorkshire.
The young earl wrote every day, his uneasiness increasing as the time passed. He communicated his alarm to Sir John Freise and Mr. Atkins, and they telegraphed to the clergyman of the little town in whose vicinity Wynde Heights was situated, begging him to call and see if Miss Wynde was in good health.
The answer to this dispatch came promptly, and also by telegraph. It was to this effect:
“Sir John Freise and Mr. Atkins: Wynde Heights is untenanted, save by the housekeeper. Miss Wynde has not been here, nor have Mr. and Mrs. Black.”
On receipt of this astounding message, the young earl posted up to town, as did Sir John Freise and Mr Atkins. They searched for the missing heiress and her guardians, but their search was futile. Not a trace of her could be found. She had come up to London with her enemies, but no further clue to her could be found. She had completely disappeared, and her fate was shrouded in dark and horrible mystery!
CHAPTER II.
THE PUZZLE OF NEVA’S WHEREABOUTS.
On going up to town with Sir John Freise and Mr. Atkins to engage in the search for Neva Wynde, who had so strangely and mysteriously disappeared, Lord Towyn had left orders with the steward of his marine villa to forward to him in London without delay any and all letters that might arrive to the address of the young earl. And so, while he prosecuted his researches with desperate energy, Lord Towyn half expected by every post some news from his young betrothed.
The three guardians of Neva’s estate were sadly puzzled and thoroughly alarmed, but for Neva’s own sake they kept the mystery to themselves. Mr. Atkins urged that no detectives be taken into their confidence, and that no newspapers be permitted to publish the strange story.
“We shall do as well as any detectives,” said the attorney, “and if there is any game afoot, we will not set the villains who are at work in it upon their guard.”
“Villains?” echoed Sir John Freise disapprovingly. “The thing is mysterious, Mr. Atkins, but it is susceptible of explanation. Had it not been for Miss Wynde’s promise to write daily to Lord Towyn, and her failure to comply with that promise, we should have suspected no harm. ‘Villains’ is a strong word to apply to Miss Wynde’s companions. Miss Wynde may have fallen ill on the way to Wynde Heights, or the plan of the tour may have been changed. In fact, one of these alternatives doubtless contains the truth. But ‘villains,’ Mr. Atkins—the word troubles me. To whom do you apply it? Certainly not to the beautiful lady who was the wife of our friend Sir Harold Wynde, and who was so loved and trusted by him that he constituted her the sole personal guardian of his beloved daughter?”
“And who so appreciated her husband’s love and noble qualities,” said Mr. Atkins dryly, “that in one year from his tragic death she was receiving the loving attentions of a Craven Black, and in fifteen months after Sir Harold’s death became the wife of a Craven Black! Bah! I was never deceived in Lady Wynde, not even when Sir Harold brought her home to Hawkhurst. She is a bold, designing, unscrupulous creature, and it is as well that Sir Harold died before she broke his heart.”
“Mr. Atkins, your harsh judgment amazes me—”
“I imagine, Sir John Freise,” said the attorney, “that in your secret soul your opinion of Mrs. Craven Black is much higher than mine. Have you been blind to the insatiable vanity, and the vulgarity and illtaste of the widow of Sir Harold Wynde, who, fifteen months after losing the noblest husband the sun ever shone on, converts that husband’s house into a ball-room, and sets his church bells ringing and his tenantry dancing at her marriage with a gambler and adventurer, unworthy even to breathe the same air with Sir Harold’s pure young daughter? You look shocked, Sir John. If it were necessary, I could give you my further opinion concerning Mrs. Craven Black, but you are sufficiently shocked already.”
“You said, Mr Atkins,” said Lord Towyn, “that you thought Mrs. Black unscrupulous. I cannot believe her as base as you think, but I have a question to submit to you and Sir John. When I asked Miss Wynde to become my wife, she told me that it had been her father’s last wish that she should marry Rufus Black—”
“Impossible!” cried Sir John and Mr. Atkins, in a breath.
“Miss Wynde showed me a letter purporting to have been written by Sir Harold the night before his sudden death,” said Lord Towyn. “I have the letter with me, and a study of it may throw light upon a matter that certainly looks dark to me. I could almost make oath that the deceased baronet never wrote this letter. It deceived Neva completely, if it prove, as I have declared it, a forgery.”
He produced the letter, and gave it into the hands of Mr. Atkins. The attorney read it aloud, weighing each phrase and turn of sentence.
“Sir Harold wrote it,” declared Sir John Freise, without hesitation. “I have heard him express himself in those quaint, oddly turned sentences a hundred times. Those pet names for his daughter, so tender and poetical, were surely written by him. Miss Wynde accepted the letter as genuine, and I do the same without question.”
“And you, my lord?” inquired Atkins.
“It seems to me a forgery,” said Lord Towyn. “Rufus Black confessed to Neva that he had had no personal acquaintance with Sir Harold Wynde.”
“That is odd,” declared Sir John, puzzled. “Perhaps Sir Harold was not quite in his right mind when he wrote the letter. His presentiment of approaching death may have unsettled his judgment; but that is preposterous. I can’t explain the incongruities, but I persist in my opinion that Sir Harold Wynde wrote the letter.”
“What is your opinion, Mr. Atkins?” demanded Lord Towyn.
“Where is Rufus Black?” asked the lawyer abruptly
“Down at Hawkhurst. He remains there during the absence of the bridal party,” answered the young earl in surprise.
“And Rufus Black has confessed to Miss Wynde that he was not personally acquainted with Sir Harold Wynde?” mused the attorney.
“My opinion about young Black is, that he is a well-meaning but weak-souled lad, just the person to be made a dupe or instrument in the hands of more unscrupulous and daring souls. I don’t dislike the boy. If he were his own master, or had a different father, he’d be a decent fellow.”
“What do you think of his father, Atkins?” inquired Sir John.
“I think he’s a villain.”
“And what do you think of this letter, Atkins?” asked Lord Towyn.
“I think,” said Atkins quietly, “that it is a forgery. More, I know that it is a forgery. Sir Harold Wynde was too tender a father to attempt to control his daughter’s choice of a husband in a manner so singular. The truth is, Craven Black has begun some sort of game against the
Wyndes, and if it don’t date further back than Sir Harold’s death, I am mistaken. I see you look distressed, Sir John, so I will keep my ideas to myself until I can prove their value. Lord Towyn, will you allow me to retain this letter for the present, to study at my leisure?”
The young earl assented, and Atkins secured the letter on his person.
“And now what are we to do?” asked Sir John.
“I shall take a turn up into Yorkshire, and have a look at Wynde Heights for myself,” said Atkins. “You had better remain here, Sir John, and not expose yourself to useless fatigue.”
“I shall go with you, Atkins,” declared the young earl.
Sir John Freise was anxious to accompany them, but he was scarcely able to bear the fatigue of so hurried a journey, and permitted himself to be overruled. He agreed to remain at their hotel, the Langham, until the return of his friends from the north, and that very evening Lord Towyn and Mr. Atkins departed for Yorkshire.
They arrived in due time at Wynde Heights, a lofty hill, crowned with a beautiful, wide spreading villa, built after the Italian style, and having long colonades. There were ample grounds attached to the villa, a hundred acres or more in extent. Lord Towyn and Mr. Atkins drove out to the place in a cab, and alighting at the carriage porch rang loudly for admittance.
An old housekeeper, a Yorkshire woman, with a broad face and quiet manners, and with but little of the usual Yorkshire burr in her speech, opened the door cautiously after a long delay, and peeped out at them with apparent timidity.
“How do you do, ma’am?” said the lawyer, raising his hat to her respectfully. “We have called to see Miss Wynde and Mrs. Craven Black.”
“The leddies are not here, sir,” answered the housekeeper.
“Not here!” exclaimed Atkins. “But Mrs. Black said they were coming here.”
“Her leddyship wrote to me to have the house ready for her, after her new marriage,” said the housekeeper, “and to engage servants, which I did. And about two weeks ago I got a letter from her leddyship, telling me to dismiss the servants and shut up the house, as her leddyship had decided not to come to the Heights, and I obeyed orders.”
“Will you show us that letter?” demanded the lawyer. “We are the guardians of Miss Wynde’s estate, and find it necessary to see the young lady at the earliest possible moment. We expected to find her here, but the letter may afford us some clue to her whereabouts. This gentleman is Lord Towyn, and I am William Atkins, the attorney of the Wynde family.”
The housekeeper threw wide open the door of the house. Both names were familiar to her, and she welcomed the visitors as those having a right to the hospitalities of the place.
“Come in, my lord; come in, sir,” she exclaimed. “I will get the letter for you.”
The visitors followed her into a cool, unused parlor, and seated themselves, while the woman hurried away in quest of the letter of which she had spoken.
“I had an idea that the Blacks might be stopping here secretly,” said Atkins, in a low voice; “but I’ve changed my mind, my lord. They have not been here. The housekeeper’s face is honesty itself. We’ll have to look elsewhere. I’m sorry we’ve wasted time on the wrong tack.”
The housekeeper reappeared with the letter. Lord Towyn and Mr. Atkins read it. It had been written by Mrs. Craven Black, and was to the effect that she had changed her mind, and that the bridal party would not come north that season, and ordering the newly engaged servants to be dismissed, and the house to be again closed. Atkins sighed, as he restored the letter to the housekeeper.
“We are much obliged to you ma’am,” he said, “and now we must hasten back to London. If you hear from your mistress, be kind
enough to drop me a line at my address. There’s my card. But it’s not likely you will hear from Mrs. Black before we do.”
The visitors bade the housekeeper good morning, and hurried back to the railway station in their cab, catching the down train, and speeding on their way to London.
“I don’t believe our party is in England,” said Atkins musingly, as they steamed swiftly down the line to the southward. “It would be like the Blacks, if they had any game afoot, to make for the Continent. Our next point is to make inquiries at the docks, or at the railway stations.”
They arrived in London in the morning, and hastened to the Langham hotel, where they had an interview with Sir John Freise, who was looking worn and ill under all this suspense and anxiety. The three gentlemen devoted the day to visiting the various railway stations and offices of the Continental boats. They visited also the foreign packet-boats lying in dock, and toward evening learned from the steward of an Ostend boat, that a party such as was described, consisting of two ladies and one gentleman, had crossed the Channel to Ostend at about the time indicated by Atkins.
“Thank Heaven! We are on the track!” breathed Sir John.
“Atkins and I will start for Ostend by way of Dover this very night,” said Lord Towyn, all ardor and impatience.
Atkins drew out a golden sovereign, which he held tantalizingly before the eyes of the steward.
“Answer a few more questions,” said the attorney, “and this is yours, my good fellow. Describe the gentleman who accompanied the two ladies.”
The steward hesitated, eyeing the coin with greedy eyes.
“He was tall and fair, with mustaches,” he said slowly, as if fearing the description would not suit his interlocutor, “and he was dressed in black.”
“That would describe Craven Black well enough,” murmured Sir John.
“And the ladies?” questioned Atkins. “How did they look?”
“One was some years older than the other, and was dark, with black eyes. The young lady had lighter hair They were going on to Brussels, and I took it that the elder lady and gentleman were newly married,” said the steward, “they were that sickish, begging your pardon.”
“There’s no doubt we are on the right track,” cried Sir John, in a tone of relief.
Atkins paid the steward the promised sovereign, and led the way ashore and to the waiting cab.
“To the hotel,” he ordered.
The gentlemen entered the vehicle and hastened back to the Langham. Atkins was very thoughtful and silent during the journey, but as they drove up to the hotel he said:
“We are tired Lord Towyn, and must have rest. I propose that we sleep here to-night, and go on to Dover and Ostend in the morning. I know how anxious and impatient you are, but we must not overtask our strength. You look quite worn out.”
“It is with anxiety then,” said the young earl. “I am eager to go on, Mr. Atkins, but will wait till morning as you counsel.”
The three gentlemen ascended to their private parlor which they shared in common. As they entered the room, a man who was standing at one of the windows, looking out, turned and came forward to meet them.
He was the steward of Lord Towyn’s marine place.
“You here, Sewel?” exclaimed the young earl. “Is anything the matter?”
The steward, an elderly man, with a rugged countenance, as gnarled as an old oak, yet full of kindly warmth, shook his head as he answered:
“There’s nothing wrong, my lord; but you ordered any letters to be sent to you, and knowing how anxious you were, I feared the letter
might miscarry, and here it is. I brought it myself.”
“A letter!” cried the three gentlemen in chorus, having no thought of any letter save the one they so much desired.
“It’s in a lady’s hand, and that’s why I brought it,” said the steward. He took out his pocket-book and drew from it a small square envelope, daintily addressed and sealed.
Lord Towyn uttered a cry of joy, recognizing the handwriting at once.
“It is from Neva!” he ejaculated.
He hurried with it to a window, turning his back on his friends, and tore open the envelope, disclosing a four-page letter, signed with the name of Neva Wynde.
“Ah!” he cried aloud. “It is dated Brussels.”
“We were on the right track then,” said Atkins exultantly
The young earl perused his letter with a glad heart.
It was very tender and very sweet, full of delicate allusions to their betrothal, and was indeed such a letter as only a woman could write, yet the young lover was not satisfied. The letter lacked the straightforward simplicity that distinguished Neva, and it seemed to Lord Towyn to lack also sincerity. It had been written from the head rather than from the heart, and his first great joy and gladness gave way to a sudden and terrible sense of disappointment.
The steward, seeing that he was not wanted, went quietly from the room, intent upon securing his dinner.
Mr. Atkins and Sir John Freise approached our hero, and the baronet laid a kindly hand upon the young earl’s shoulder.
“Forgive us for interrupting your happy reverie, Lord Towyn,” he said, “but we are very anxious. Miss Wynde writes from Brussels, and in good spirits? We have been troubling ourselves for nothing?”
The young earl did not look around, nor did he speak. He only clutched the letter tighter in his fingers.
“We have got into a panic for nothing,” said Atkins, smiling. “We will keep the joke to ourselves. I would not have Mr. Black curling his cynical lips over our folly, not for worlds. No doubt Miss Wynde satisfactorily explains her previous silence, my lord, and we are free to return home again, wiser if not better men?”
The young earl turned to his companions now, and they started when they saw how deadly pale he was, and what a look of terror and anguish gleamed from his warm blue eyes.
“Miss Wynde is not ill?” cried Sir John.
Lord Towyn raised his arm, waving the letter in the air.
“This letter is in Neva’s handwriting, and signed with her name,” he said, in a strained voice. “It purports to come from her, but, before God, I believe it to be a forgery! My instinct tells me that Neva never wrote it. We are upon the wrong track. Neva is not at Brussels. Perhaps she is not out of England. She is in the hands of her enemies, who have formed some foul conspiracy against her, and we, O God! are powerless to save her!”
CHAPTER III.
AN ADVERTISEMENT QUICKLY ANSWERED.
As the hour drew near for the arrival of the expected guest at Sandy Lands, a suppressed excitement pervaded the pert little villa from basement to attic. The servants had all received orders to wait upon Mrs. Wroat with the utmost alacrity, and some notion of her wealth and eccentricity had been conveyed to them, together with the idea that Mr. and Mrs. Blight entertained “expectations” of inheriting the old lady’s fortune at her death.
Mr. Blight had remained at home upon this day, in order that his aunt-in-law might not conceive herself neglected by him. He was dressed in his Sunday garments, and was practising a smile of welcome, which had somewhat a sickly look, contrasted as it was with his anxious eyes, and uneasy, apprehensive manner.
“Everything hangs upon this visit,” he muttered to himself, as he stood at the parlor window, watching the road. “The old creature is a bundle of whims and caprices, and if she should leave her money to a charity we are undone. Our expenses are so heavy that I can no longer meet them. The old woman must make her will in my favor!”
Mrs. Blight had attired herself in a tightly fitting gown of red silk, through which her rotund figure threatened to burst at any moment, and she wore a massive gold chain, a necklace, bracelets and brooch, so that she might have personated at a fancy ball the character of an animated jeweller’s shop.
“What have you got on all that jewelry for?” demanded Mr. Blight, glancing at his wife, as she complacently surveyed the reflection of her stout person and flushed face in the long mirror.
“Why?” said Mrs. Blight, with a degree of worldly wisdom for which her husband, it is to be feared, had never given her credit, “there’s nothing like making the old woman think we are prosperous. Money brings money If Aunt Wroat sees us haggling about the butcher’s
bills and the school bills, she may think her money is going into a bottomless bucket. But if she sees us apparently rich, and without money cares, she will be more anxious to leave her money to us.”
“That’s so,” said Mr. Blight. “I wish she’d come. Upon my soul, I do. Why didn’t my uncle leave me his money, and give his wife an annuity? In that case, I shouldn’t have cared what became of her, and I certainly would not have been dancing attendance upon her.
All our care,” he added sourly, “and all our flattery will go for nothing if the children are not kept out of the way. And there the young savages come pellmell down the stairs.”
“The ‘young savages!’” moaned Mrs. Blight, in terrible reproach. “Have you the soul of a father? Can you call your own offspring savages, as if they were the children of a red Indian, or of cannibals? I’ll send the poor dears back to the school-room. Between you and your horrible old aunt, the poor darlings are in terror of their lives.”
Mrs. Blight hastened out into the hall, but it was now empty. The young governess and the nurse had captured all of the refractory brood save Leopold, and had conveyed them back to the schoolroom. Leopold had made good his escape into the garden, and was now careering about like a young colt, shouting at the top of his voice.
Mrs. Blight, hearing the noise made by her offspring, was full of terror lest her guest should arrive, and encounter the terrible infant at the gate of Sandy Lands. She rang the bell violently, and ordered Miss Bird to take charge of her pupil immediately. Lally descended to the garden to obey this command, and at the very moment when he chose to yield to her persuasions and be led away captive, a heavily laden cab drove up to the garden door, and the garden bell was rung violently.
The smart housemaid hastened to give admittance to the visitor, and the youthful Leopold, greatly excited at the prospect of seeing Mrs. Wroat, whom he detested, but cordially loved to annoy, struggled in Lally’s grasp. The young girl drew her charge into the shadow of a clump of trees, and stood there, panting and flushed, just as the visitor’s luggage was brought in in advance of the visitor herself.
First came three large trunks, a bandbox in a green cotton bag, a parrot in a cage, who croaked and chattered and muttered hoarse threats, and a blue silk family umbrella.
And then followed the queerest old lady Lally had ever seen. She leaned upon the arm of a tall, angular, hatchet-faced woman, her maid and constant attendant, who spoke to her mistress with a loving gentleness a mother might exhibit toward her child, but which sounded strangely from her thin, compressed lips, and who guided the faltering steps of her mistress with the tenderest care.
It was the old lady, however, upon whom Lally’s gaze was fixed with strange intensity. She was thin and withered and bent, a mere wreck of a woman who had been in her day handsome, graceful and spirited. She was nearly eighty years of age, and her hands, incased in black knitted mittens, through whose open meshes her bony fingers showed, clasped a gold-headed staff, which partially supported her, the maid giving her an arm.
The old lady wore an old-fashioned brocade gown, a big traveling cloak, a white frilled cap, and a huge scuttle-shaped bonnet, such as had been worn in her early prime. But her eyes were black and keen and penetrating, full of sparkle and brightness; her hooked nose was prominent like an eagle’s beak; and her mouth was curled habitually in a strangely cynical smile or sneer.
The old lady gave a quizzical glance up at the doorway, in which stood Mr. and Mrs. Blight with outstretched arms, and then looked toward Lally. The young girl shrank back, and hurried in at the rear porch and up stairs with her young charge, just as Mrs. Wroat came in at the front door and was received by her connections with loud exclamations of welcome.
The visitor was installed in her own apartments, and she did not emerge from them for the remainder of the day. Mr. Blight went to his office. A supernatural stillness reigned throughout the villa. Mrs. Wroat chose to appear at dinner, which was served at Sandy Lands at seven o’clock; and Mr. Blight was then at home to give her his arm into the dining-room, and to pay her all necessary attentions.
She looked, as Mrs. Blight privately remarked to her husband, “like a witch of Endor,” in her dinner costume of black velvet, with a scarlet velvet circular cloak thrown about her thin bent figure, and with her keen black eyes peering sharply out of her sallow face. She only needed a scarlet hood over her gray, wild looking hair, to complete her resemblance to one of the witches who are fabled to meet in lonely wood at midnight, to stir devilish messes in boiling caldrons. But then she wore a set of very fine diamonds, and even a “witch of Endor,” with diamonds, would have been handsomely treated by Mrs. Blight.
The old lady was not as courteous as a female Chesterfield. In fact she snapped out spiteful remarks with the utmost unconsciousness of the rising anger of host or hostess, taking a malicious pleasure in stirring up their evil passions, knowing that they dared not give vent to them. It may be that she comprehended their time-serving, speculating natures, and realized that they paid court to her only for her money.
“Miserable wine!” she commented, with a wry face, as she set down her glass. “Gladstone, isn’t it, Charles? It comes at four and six the dozen bottles, I believe. I never buy it myself. I prefer to take wormwood and vitriol undiluted.”
The lawyer flushed. He prided himself on being a connoisseur of wines, and having the choicest cellar in Canterbury.
“That’s real port, Aunt Wroat,” he exclaimed—“of the vintage of ’42.”
“Oh, they told you that, did they?” asked the old lady “These cheap wine dealers are up to all sorts of tricks. I am surprised that you should have been taken in so, nephew Charles. At your time of life a man should have some judgment of his own.”
Mr. Blight bit his lips furiously, and his wife fancied she heard the old lady chuckle softly to herself, but a glance at her did not confirm the impression.
Presently the old lady opened an attack upon the lawyer’s wife. She looked at her though a quizzing-glass, and exclaimed suddenly, with apparent astonishment:
“Laura, do you think it good taste to wear all that Brummagem? If I could not get real gold, I wouldn’t put on servant’s ornaments; I wouldn’t indeed.”
“But these are real gold, Aunt Wroat,” said Mrs. Blight, her voice trembling with annoyance.
“Tut, tut,” said the old lady severely. “Don’t contradict me. I have been used to good jewelry all my life, and ought to know it when I see it. Good gold! Ha, ha! If you don’t know good gold, ask your cook.”
Mrs. Blight nearly choked with rage, and sulked during the remainder of the dinner, or until her husband threw her a warning glance that reminded her that she could not afford to quarrel with their eccentric relative.
Several times during the repast the host and hostess were stirred to anger they dared not exhibit, and several times Mrs. Blight fancied she heard the old lady chuckle to herself, but of this she could not be quite sure. The Blights fawned upon their wealthy guest, swallowed her insults, and smiled distractedly at her deadliest thrusts. But both drew a sigh of relief when the old lady had been carried back into the drawing-room.
“May be she’ll go to her room now?” whispered Mrs. Blight to her husband, as the old lady fanned herself vigorously, and appeared oblivious of their existence.
“No such good luck,” returned the lawyer ill-naturedly. “She ought to be shut up in a lunatic asylum, the old nuisance. If it wasn’t for her money, she might die in an alms-house before I’d give her shelter.”
The whisper was not low, but then Mrs. Wroat was supposed to be “as deaf as a post,” and of course she could not hear a sound so faint and indistinct. Mr. and Mrs. Blight had frequently vented their opinions much more loudly before her. But there was an odd snap in her eyes on this occasion, as they thus whispered to each other, and again Mrs. Blight fancied she heard a malicious chuckle, but the old lady fell to coughing in a frightful manner, and the lawyer’s wife had no time for fancies, believing the old lady likely to die on the spot.
When the paroxysm was over, and Mrs. Wroat began to breathe freely, Mrs. Blight said, not without nervousness:
“You have a terrible cold, Aunt Wroat. Don’t you do anything for it?”
“It’s a cold that’ll last me my days,” said Mrs. Wroat. “It’s consumption.”
“Do you employ a doctor for it?” asked the lawyer.
“Death is the best doctor,” answered the old lady, with grim facetiousness. “He’ll cure it for nothing. This is my last visit to you, Charles. I sha’n’t last much longer.”
“Oh, I hope you will live twenty years yet, and visit us every year!” cried Mrs. Blight. “Dear Aunt Wroat, we love to have you with us.”
“Yes, I know it,” said Mrs. Wroat, with another odd snap in her witchlike eyes. “I know it, my dear. It’s time to settle my affairs. I am thinking of making my will soon.”
The Blights tried to look unconcerned, but failed. Their curiosity and anxiety displayed themselves in their features.
“Shall you leave your money to a charity, dear Aunt Wroat?” inquired Mrs. Blight caressingly.
“No, no! I shall leave it to—But don’t ask me. You’ll know in good time.”
The lawyer looked significantly at his wife.
“She means to leave it to us!” he whispered. “The old nuisance will pay us for our trouble at last.”
It was singular that just then another fit of coughing attacked the old lady. When it was over, she said sharply:
“I’ll go to my room. I want to be composed, or I sha’n’t sleep a wink to-night. We’ll visit to-morrow, but I am tired after my journey. I should like some one to play a little music for me in my room, but I don’t want any sentimental songs from your girls, Laura.”
“The governess will sing and play for you, dear Aunt Wroat,” said Mrs. Blight. “She has orders to obey you during your visit, and you
can command her at any or all hours.”
“Then send her to me in half an hour. Charles, you can carry me up stairs.”
The lawyer obeyed the intimation, carrying the old lady up to her own room and depositing her in her armchair. The maid was in attendance, and the lawyer and his wife bade their guest an affecting good-night, and retreated to the drawing-room to speculate upon their prospects and the state of Mrs. Wroat’s health.
“Shut the door, Peters,” said the old lady. “And you might open the windows and air the room after those people’s presence.”
Peters obeyed. She was wont to humor all the whims of her mistress.
“Did you find them the same as usual, ma’am?” she asked.
“Just the same, Peters,” and the old lady sighed. “They call me ‘an old cat’ and ‘a nuisance’ in whispers, and ‘dear Aunt Wroat’ out aloud. Miserable hypocrites! I wanted to give them a last chance, but they have ruined their prospects with me. Bah! A pair of fawning, treacherous cats! They will never get a penny of my money beyond a guinea to buy a mourning ring.”
“What shall you do, ma’am? Leave your money to a charity?”
“No, I won’t do that. I won’t have it scattered and doled out in sixpennies and shillings, when the whole sum might go to enrich some deserving person. I’ll leave you an annuity, Peters. You’re the only true friend I have on earth.”
The woman caressed the withered hand of her old mistress with genuine affection.
“Have you given up all hope of finding your own relatives, ma’am?” she asked. “You tracked your niece until after her marriage with a corn-chandler, and have discovered that she died, leaving one child, a daughter, and that her husband died also. The girl may live, ma’am. She’s the last of your blood, and surely it’s better to give to your own kin than to undeserving connections or to strangers.”
“But I can’t find the girl,” sighed the old lady “I’d adopt her and leave her my money, if she was deserving of it; but I’ve set detectives to look for her, and they have failed to discover anything except that her moonstruck parents named her the ‘The Vailed Prophet,’ or ‘Lalla Rookh,’ or some such nonsense. They did find out that she had been educated like a lady—her mother was a lady—and that she had taught music, or drawing, or something. But she may be dead by this time.”
“We might advertise for her,” cried the maid all enthusiasm. “We could say, if Miss So and So would call at such a place, she would hear of something to her advantage. I do wish you would leave your money to some nice young lady, instead of these people below. I’ll write the advertisement immediately. What is the name of your greatniece, Mrs. Wroat?”
“It’s Kubla Khan, or Lalla Rookh Bird,” answered the old lady. “There was a crack in my niece’s brain, as was shown by her marriage with a corn-chandler, and by the naming of her child. I wonder what kind of a bird the corn-chandler was,” and Mrs. Wroat laughed queerly. “He left his daughter not one penny to bless herself with. Write the advertisement, Peters, at once. What geese we were not to have thought of an advertisement before. If I can find and cage my Bird, Peters, and it turns out a good and worthy Bird, I’ll leave her the whole of my fifty thousand pounds, and you shall have an annuity, Peters, and live with her and take care of her. She’s only a child—not over seventeen.”
Peters brought out her mistress’ portable writing-desk, and sat down before it to pen the required advertisement. Being unused to composition, she spoiled a dozen sheets of paper before she produced the following, which she read aloud to her mistress:
“If Miss Lalla Bird will apply to the undersigned she will hear of something to her advantage. M. W., Mount street, London, W.”
“That will do,” cried Mrs. Wroat delighted. “M. W.—Maria Wroat. Very good. We’ll have it in all the London papers. Make a dozen copies of it, and address them to a dozen different papers. You shall get the
